cast out from their Communion as unclean Dogs all reformed Churches will fight for any Reformation which comes neare to them though it be never so well warranted and held forth in the Word of God We read of Manasseh the King of Iudah that when the Captains of the host of the King of Assyria came against him they took him in the thorns bound him in chaines and carryed him to Babylon where he was in great affliction 2 Chron. 33.11 When the City could not defend him he fled for shelter into the Briar bushes and there he was caught and held fast by the hooked pricks for the enemies to take him and even so it will be with us if wee trust in these pricking thornes and betake our selves to them for helpe they will betray us into the enemies hands Wherefore let us set our hearts to rest wholly on our God and to seek to him with fasting prayer and humiliation for deliverance from these Bryars and Thornes and from their hooks and snares And because while we regard iniquity in our hearts the Lord will not heare us let us confesse our sins with mournful hearts and forsake them and the Lord will forgive the iniquity of them and will be our refuge and strength and a present helpe in all our troubles For if we could but prepare our hearts and fit our selves for deliverance by obtaining mercy to have our sinnes and transgressions blotted out and could wash our hearts from wickednesse and put away by repentance our sinnes which doe strengthen the hands of our enimies against us God would quickly scatter all them that rise up to vex us and not spare nor indure them for one moment they are all even the best of them the hatefull pricks of the cursed briar fully ripe for destruction Sin is that which brought them for a curse upon the ground and repentance and putting away of our sins is the onely way to rid the land of them the Lord is ready and waiteth for our amendment that instantly and without delay he may scatter them as with a whirlewinde both the green and the dry The third point in my Text is That God will not suffer the righteous to feel the evill and mischiefe intended and plotted against them by the bands of their enemies and persecutors but will most timely and seasonably take away and destroy all and every prick of that cursed bramble and spare none neither greene nor dry There are two kinds of feeling one is by outward and bodily sense of things which touch us and we touch and handle them this is expressed in the Originall Scriptures by an Hebrew word which implies bodily touching The other is the inward sense of feeling by knowledg and understanding This feeling reacheth beyond bodily sense of the flesh even to the soule and spirit and it is expressed in the Originall by the hebrew words Iadagh and Iabin which signifie to know and understand the thing bodily felt Of this feeling we read Prov. 23.35 where it is said of a drunken man That he is stricken and yet is not sick of his blow he is beaten but he feels it not It is certaine his flesh feeles it and the stripes leave a print behind but he hath not for the present the use of his reason to know and understand because his spirits are drowned in drink and oppressed with moist vapours Also Eccles. 8.5 it is said that he that keepeth the Commandement shall not feele evill that is not evill as a plague or curse reaching to the soule nor as an evill of wrath and revenge for so the righteous doe not feele any evill though they feele in the flesh many afflictions of tryall and chastisement which are not evill but good to them Wee read that Isaac did bodily feele Iacob by touching his hands and neck but he did not know nor understand that it was Iacob whom he felt and so he had a feeling of him in part only by bodily sense but not a full and perfect feeling of him in soule and spirit by knowledg and understanding Here my Text speakes of a full sense and feeling aswell inwardly in soule and spirit as outwardly in the flesh For the word Jabiâ—u which signifies such a feeling is here used the words thus opened minister the third Doctrine viz. That God out of his tender love and watchfull providence over his Church and people doth frustrate the wicked counsels and purposes doctrine 3 of their Enemies and scatters their persecutors before they proceed and prevaile so far as to make them feel the evill and mischiefe which they are sharply set and cruelly bent to inflict and bring upon them The full Scope and intent of this Doctrine is to shew and to hold out unto us these 3 things First that God is ready to prevent the evills intended against his Church and People by their enemies and delivers them from them oftentimes before they have any sence or feeling of them at all Secondly that though the Lord suffers the wicked to afflict his Church and to be his rod to scourge his People either for their sins by way of sharp correction or for tryall of their faith and patience yet he never leaves them in their hand to feel their worst nor gives them to their lust rage and fury to be devoured and swallowed up of them or to bee put to sense and feeling of paine intollerable Thirdly though the cruell enemies of Gods Church and persecutors of his people may proceed so far as to kill their bodies with sense of outward torment and violence done to the flesh yet they shall never reach to their soules and spirits nor prevaile so farre as to make them feele the evill and mischiefe intended against their inward man the soule and spirit For the confirming of this Doctrine in all these particulars we have cleare testimonies and pregnant examples in the sacred Scriptures First that God prevents the evil intended by the enemies against his people so that they doe not feele it neither doth it touch them at all it is plainly affirmed Psalme 91.2 3. where it is said of them that trust in the Lord and make him their refuge that he will deliver them from the snare of the Fowler and from all other evills which are most terrible so that no evill shall befall them nor plague come neare their dwelling onely with their eyes shall they behold and see the reward of the wicked their enemies Also Psalme 27.2 When the wicked even mine enemies saith David came against me to eate up my flesh they stumbled and fell And Psalme 37. The wicked plotteth against the righteous and gnasheth upon him with his teeth he hath drawne out his sword and bent his Bow to cast downe and to slay such as be upright but the Lord shall laugh at him for he seeth that his day is comming His sword shall enter into his owne heart and his Bow
on them as any others The laborious Ministers are robbed of their livelihood by bands of Anabaptists Separatists and other profane covetous persons and have no reliefe nor remedy but that which is worse than the disease And yet when any taxe is layd on their parishes they are assessed more deeply than some of double and trible ability This I speak not that I have any cause to complaine but I am grieved to see the palpable wrongs and to heare the complaints of my suffring brethren The Church of Christ is wofully rent and torne by the bands of of Schismaticks and blasphemous Hereticks who when they have rob'd the folds of the Pastors and stollen away their sheep do raise up Hue and Cry against them for demanding their owne and while they persecute with the sword of their slanderous tongues all godly Orthodox Ministers who desire to walk in the beaten way of all Reformed Churches and to be guided therein by the cleare light of Gods word and spirit they cry out persecution persecution worse than Prelaticall we are persecuted imprisoned banished for our Consciences and not suffered to enjoy Christian Libertie Indeed if heresie blasphemy mutiny raised up in the Church and State and open affronts offered to this religious Parliament be Christian Liberty and Conscience some of them have been lightly imprisoned for such doings a few dayes but of any other persecution for Conscience we have not yet heard These great and scandalous sinnes with horrid blasphemies belched out against Christ the Gospell the Law of God and the holy Scriptures while they are not punished by the Magistrate nor by the offenders repented of nor generally mourned for by us all nor with godly griefe and sorrow bewayled they provoke God to continue our plagues and to strengthen the hand of the wicked against us and his anger is not turned away but his hand is stretched out still Besides it is to be feared that we have not throughly repented nor so grieved and bitterly mourned for our iniquities which provoked God to give us in his wrath tyrannicall Lords and Lordly Prelates to rule over us with rigour neither have we humbled our soules as we ought even to shame our selves by publike confession and open detestation of those offences and crimes whereof we are generally guilty in one measure or other in that out of cowardly feare we yeelded our necks to the Antichristian yoke of Prelaticall Tyrants receiving without contradiction or resistance their Popish Ceremonies superstitious Rites and Idolatrous Innovations and too many soothed them in their usurped power and Lordly dominion over Gods inheritance fathering it on them by Divine Right Some have out of wilfull ignorance and some out of flattery some out of ambition and a covetous desire of preferment by their means been instruments to confirme them in their pride and power unlimitted As the Lord by the Prophet Ieremiah complained against the Iewes in a time when their Church and State were desperately corrupt and incurable ready to be wholly ruined saying A wonderfull and horrible thing is committed in the Land the Prophets prophesie falsely the Priests rule and take power into their hands by their means and my people love to have it so and what will yee do in the end thereof So it might have been truely said of us our Prophets prophesied falsely they preached for the pompe and Lordly power of Bishops and Metrapolitanes proclaimed them to be Lords over mens consciences and the onely Pastors of all the Churches in their Diocesses and Provinces and all other Ministers to be no Pastors but onely their Curats and slavish vassalls bound by oath to obey their Dictats and Canons By this meanes they took into their hands the whole power of Church and State they tyrannized and Lorded it in their high Commission Courts not only over Ministers and their flocks but also over the Nobility and Gentry who were compelled to crouch to them they haled men to prison by hard and close imprisonment murthered the innonocent they robbed men of their estates by arbitrary fines they over-awed Iudges Counsellors and Officers of state so that by them they made their owne will and lust law just judgements were restrained and wrong judgment proceeded at their command the wicked were favoured and promoted and all godly people especially faithfull Orthodox Ministers were hated and hunted after with nets and the people loved to have it so for they were ready to seeke their favour by accusing and slandering their Preachers exposing them to their fury and betraying them into their mercilesse hands And what remained then for us to doe but in anguish of soule to cry out and complain in the words of the Prophet Isaiah chap. 59.11 c. We roar like Bears and mourne sore like Doves we looked for light and behold obscurity justice is turned backward equity cannot enter truth faileth and he that departeth from evill maketh himselfe a pray And except the Lord of Hosts had left unto us a small remnant of faithfull praying people we should have beene as Sodome and we should have been as Gomorah But when he saw our afliction he looked on us with compassion and seeing that there was none to help his own arme brought salvation to us his righteousnesse it sustained us hee put on garments of vengeance for cloathing and was clad with zeale as with a Cloak and according to their deeds accordingly he hath repayed fury to our oppressors and recompence to his and our enemies hee hath broken rheir nets and we are delivered Here if any object and say If the Lord be with us to deliver us why are we thus troubled and vexed stil with feares of open enemies and with dangers of Malignants among us I must say againe I feare wee have not rendred to God thanks and prayse with the slaughter of our sinnes and lusts and the sacrifice of new obedience and the honour due to his name for these beginnings of his mercy neither haue we sorrowed and mourned to amendment of life our former sinnes and iniquities are too many and great to be with so few teares and sighes washed and blowne away If we could weep teares of bloud for them and rend our hearts with godly remorse and be ashamed and confounded in our selves for our unthankfulnesse to so gracious a God so bountifull a Father and so mercifull a Lord and Iudge al is too little Let us therefore in these our publike Fasts both Ministers and peope powre out our soules in humble confession of our vilenesse and by aggravating our unworthinesse let us labour to make our selves and others more sensible of the greatnesse of his mercy to us and the prayse of his goodnesse and bounty to such vile sinners more admirable and glorious Let us loose the bands of wickednesse and the more cowardly and fearefull we have been like Peter in the dayes of tryall the more bitterly let us weep with Peter the more share and hand
we have had in soothing Prelates and promoting their pride the more zealous let us be in trampling their pride under foot and in abhorring all appearance of it and in shewing open detestation of all their Iniquity Superstiton and Idolatry David was a man after Gods heart and when through fleshly frailty he had fallen into great and scandalous sinnes adding to his adultery murther though upon his confession of his sin the Lord forgave the iniquity of it and the Prophet told him that the Lord had taken away his sin he should not dye nor undergoe any destroying punishment of wrath and vengeance yet he rested not in confessing fasting mourning and praying for a day but out of loathing and abhorring his sinfull corruption he afflicted his soule seven dayes lying upon the ground fasting weeping and making supplication with strong cries and saying Have mercy upon me ô God according to thy loving kindnes according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out all my transgressions wash me throughly from my wickednesse deliver me from bloud-guiltinesse create in mee a cleane heart restore to me the joy of thy salvation Psal. 51 And againe O Lord rebuke me not in thy wrath I am troubled I am bowed greatly I goe mourning all the day long As wee may more at large see in his penitential Psalmes in which his sorrowes are ingraven and recorded to all posterities And all this repentance proceeded not from horrour of conscience or feare of death and hell as that of Ahab and Iudas did but out of true remorse and godly sorrow for that he had sinned against a God so gracious and full of tender compassion His owne words shew the true ground of his griefe where he saith Against thee thee only have I sinned It was his love of God and sense of Gods love and mercy to him which made him so hate his sinnes and loath himselfe And indeed this is true Evangelicall repentance which works effectually to the mortifying of the old man killing the body of death and subduing the rebellious lusts of the flesh this makes our former sins hatefull and grievous to us and terrifies us from falling in to the like againe O how happy should we be if we could thus repent if we could thus humble our soules in these our Fasts Gods bowels of compassion would yearn towards us as the bowels of tender parents doe over a deare child when they see him grieving at the heart and mourning for his offence of them and disobedience to them When the Lord our God sees us thus penitent he will answer us graciously meet us and embrace us with love make us behold his face with joy in the righteousnesse of Iesus Christ accept his ransome for us and will say to your soules I am your salvation His scourging rod the cursed Bramble with all the Thornes and Pricks thereof all the bands of the wicked which trouble us shall be thrown away into the fire burnt and consumed I proceed to the second poynt which is the resemblance of the severall sorts of ungodly malicious and ill-affected persons banded together to consult devise and practise evil against the Church of Christ to oppresse persecute and doe mischiefe to Gods people unto the severall sorts of pricks on the great Bramble of which some are green and more tender others dryed and hardned but all sharp pricking and hurtfull and are all to be taken away as with a whirle-wind This ministers to us the second Doctrine That all persons combined in any Band or faction consulting and working together against Gods Church and people whether they bee doctrine 2 more or lesse pernicious and able to do mischiefe whether Hypocrites working under hand or open profest persecutors they are all sharers in the same wickednesse and being all of the same cursed Band and crew they shall perish in the same destruction This is further confirmed by Gods own words Psal. 50.16 c. But unto the wicked said God what hast thou to doe to declare my Statutes and to take my Covenant in thy mouth seeing thou hatest instruction and castest my word behinde thee when thou sawest a Thiefe thou consentedst to him and hast beene pertaker with the adulterers thou givest thy mouth to evill and thy tongue frameth deceit thou sittest and speakest against thy brother and slanderest thine owne mothers son In which words I observe that some wicked men make a profession of Religion declare Gods Statutes and take his Covenant in their mouth Secondly that they hate instruction oppose Reformation and break their Covenant with God Thirdly that by sitting in Counsell with persecutors speaking evill with their mouthes and framing deceit with their tongues and consenting to the deeds of evill-doers they are pertakers of their sinnes Fourthly that Gods wrath is kindled against them and if they doe not repent he will teare them in pieces and none shall deliver them And Psalme 26.4.5 The holy Psalmist pleading immunity from sliding and that God will not take him away nor gather his soule with sinners nor his life with men of bloud in whose hand is mischief because he hath not sate with vaine persons nor gone in with dissemblers but hath hated the Congregation of evill doers and will not sit in Counsell with the wicked doth necessarily intimate that all they who do joyn in counsel with the wicked help forward their designes are pertakers of their sinnes and shall perish with them And to the same purpose the Prophet Ieremy speaks saying I sate not in the assembly of the mockers nor rejoyced why is my paine perpetuall and my wound incurable which refuseth to be healed which words import that they who are of the Band of Scorners and rejoyce in their evill doings are pertakers of their wickednesse and their wages shall be perpetuall paine and wounds incurable All in Corah's conspiracy even women and children were found guilty before God of that rebellion and perished in it And in a City falling away to Idolatry all in it yong old are guilty and to be cut off And indeed there is good Reason grounded on the word of reason 1 God to prove this For if childred are punished for the sins of their fathers unto the third and fourth Generation because so long they may by sight or hearing know them and see the prints and monuments of their fraud violence oppression pride and the like and wittingly hold and possesse their ill-gotten goods of which they having knowledge become pertakers of their sinnes and make themselves guilty by approving or imitating them or neglecting to grieve and mourn for them and to make restitution and not removing their cursed things out of their families Then much more they who are Counsellors abettors actors and promoters of ungodly actions and have an hand in the doing of them are pertakers and guilty of them as being their owne sins for which they are justly punished Now the first is manifest
snares of the wicked the Lord suddenly brake the snares and we were delivered before their hooked pricks could fasten upon us or tear us Secondly though the Lord hath suffered us for our sinnes and for the tryall of our Faith to fall of late into the Bryars and we have undergone sharpe and cruell prickings in this bloudy civil war kindled in our Land yet he hath so armed us with Faith in Christ and strengthned us with courage and with confidence and with full assurance of his love that wee goe through all cheerefully and comfortably as if we felt no hurt yea in all the afflictions we feele no stroke of wrath and revenge at all but only chastisements of love fatherly corrections and tryalls which are the faithfull wounds of a lover better and more safe then the deceitfull kisses and embracings of our enemies Thirdly in the midst of Thornes and Bryers when the Lord suffers the swords of the enemies to cut our flesh and to wound and kill our bodies and to shed our bloud that they may fill up to the full the measure of their iniquities yet he suffers not their violence to reach unto our soules we stand firme and stedfast in faith and so far are we from wavering in Religion inclining to Popery forsaking the cause of Christ and suffering our soules to be betrayed wounded and slaine that wee have renewed our Covenant with God have bound our selves to stand for a more full Reformation of Church and State and to maintain the true Reformed Religion with our bodies lives and goods and to oppose popery and all other Sects and Opinions contrarie to true godlinesse O how are we bound to admire the love mercy bounty and goodnesse of the Lord our God in all these notable passages of his providence watchfulnesse and provident care over his Church and people in this land how ought we to love honour serve and obey him to seek continually to him for help and to call upon his name and to humble our selves even to the dust for our many sinnes and provocations by which we have most unthankfully borne our selves towards him and ill-requited all his kindnesses to us Let these our monethly Fasts heave us up every one a step and degree higher in our devotion zeale and reformation of life and the oftner we are put in remembrance of Gods mercies to us and our sins against his holy Majesty the more let us be humbled the more let us crye mightily to God in confession prayer and supplication which if he gives us grace to doe we shall have no need to feare or doubt but may be confident that he will scatter the bands of our enemies and all the cursed pricks of the cursed Bramble he will take away every one as with a whirle-winde as my Text here speaks Secondly this Doctrine is of use to strengthen the faith of vse 2 weake Christians and to put courage into them that are fearefull and cowardly in our Land now in these perillous times wherein so many pricking Bryars and grieving Thornes are suddenly growne up among us and severall bands of desperate sons of Belial are multiplyed within us and round about us on every side Gods love to his Church and his care for his people and watchfulnesse over them doth not alwayes consist and appeare in suffering no hurtfull Bryars to be at all or if such happen to grow up and increase in ridding the land of them speedily for this is the way to make us grow secure and cold in prayer and seeking to him sinne not corrected will increase and faith not tryed nor exercised wil grow rusty and there will be no manifestation of them that are approved But herein especially is Gods love and care for his people manifested when hee suffers Bryars and Thornes to grow up and multiply in the land till they grow terrible and dangerous and yet preserves his Church as a Lilly among thornes safe and untouched and his people from all sense and feeling of any hurt from them or if the sharpe hooked pricks catch hold of them they cannot enter so far nor strike so deep as to wound them mortally and to make them feele the smart of a wrathfull and revenging stroak because they are girded with the whole Armour of God or if they wound them mortally in their bodies and in their fraile flesh yet in their soule and spirit they feele no hurt at all they are so firmly built on Christ the Rock and sustained by his righteousnesse and by his spirit that they cannot waver nor be moved from their stedfastnesse Hereby God doth manifest himselfe to be our refuge and strength and a present helpe against all troubles never failing noâ— neglecting us in time of need and firme friend in all adversities Wherefore let no mans heart faile because of the Bands of the wicked Papists or prophane Atheists gathered together to make open war against us or malignants working under hand or hereticks and Schismaticks making rents and divisions which tend to weaken us and to expose us to the rage and fury of Antichrist and his Bands But let us all put on courage and strength in these perillous times and the more that evills and dangers encrease the more stout resolute let every man be to resist them in his place and ranke and according to his ability Feare not them that can kill the body and can doe no more but feare him rather who can destroy both soule and body in hell Matth. 10.28 Cowards and fearefull persons have no place in the new Ierusalem but are shut out with unbeleevers and the abominable and murderers and whore-mongers and sorcerers and idolaters and lyers which have their portion in the Lake which burneth with fire and brimstone for evermore Rev. 21.8 The fourth and last poynt in my Text is the destruction of the enemies and persecutors of Gods Church and people in these words He will take them away with a whirle-winde as well the green as the dry The Doctrine which hence ariseth is That when God Church is most dangerously beset and most fiercely doctrine 4 assayled by the bands of enemies and persecutors of all sorts the Lord will terribly suddenly and totally scatter and destroy them all and none shall escape First he will terribly scatter and destroy them as with a tempestuous whirle-winde which commeth with great violence and terrour as we all know by experience Secondly he will destroy them suddenly for nothing riseth up nor rusheth in more suddenly than a whirle-winde Thirdly he will destroy them totally all and every one aswell the green as the dry As all have a share in the persecution of the Saints and in opposing true godlinesse so all shall perish in the same destruction First that the destruction of the wicked who band themselves together against Gods Church and people shall be dreadfull and terrible the Scriptures aboundantly testifie For the day of Gods vengeance on them is sayd to be